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Does closing of embassies mean that al-Qaeda is now a bigger threat?

Over the weekend the U.S. closed access to two dozen embassies and consulates in the Middle East and North Africa, citing threats of terrorist attacks that the Obama administration said were credible and specific.

A Yemeni soldier stops a car at a checkpoint in a street leading to the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, on Aug. 4. (AP photo)

The administration also issued a travel warning to Americans through the end of the month.

The threats were so serious that, in what it said was “an abundance of caution,” the administration kept 19 diplomatic facilities closed for the rest of the week.

The embassies in Kabul and Baghdad, however, reopened on Monday.

The New York Times reported Monday that the closure “resulted from intercepted electronic communications in which the head of Al Qaeda in Pakistan ordered the leader of its affiliate in Yemen, the terrorist organization’s most lethal branch, to carry out an attack as early as this past Sunday, according to American officials.”

The Washington Post reported that members of Congress who received classified briefings joined intelligence officials in supporting the State Department’s decision to close the outposts.

For example, the Post said, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, compared the intercepted “chatter” to data picked up before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“This is the most serious threat that I’ve seen in the last several years,” Sen. Chambliss said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The Obama administration’s extensive intelligence-gathering programs have been criticized recently for gathering unprecedented information about telephone calls and Internet use. Skeptics speculated the new warnings were meant to shore up support for such spying.

But President Obama also recently declared that the threat from terrorism had declined to pre-9/11 levels.

What do you think? Does closing of embassies mean that al-Qaeda is now a bigger threat? Take our poll and/ or leave a comment.